For the upcoming 500th anniversary of the death of the great Franco-Flemish composer Pierre de la Rue (around 1460-1518), the vocal ensemble The Sound and the Fury, which specializes in early music, has recorded a selection of the composer’s artistic masses for the label FRA BERNARDO, which impressively reflect the high standard at the court of the music-loving and music-savvy Margaret of Austria. The Pierre de la Rue masses on this recording have one thing in common: they are all based on monadic models, thus in keeping with the most traditional of cyclic mass composition models, the cantus firmus mass. Yet in their individual construction they could not be more different. Two of these masses employ just one single cantus firmus. The one based on the secular melody L’Homme Arme is the earliest of them all. L’Homme Arme was the most common secular cantus firmus of all and composers who wrote a mass based on it were aware of competing with their contemporaries. La Rue’s work is no exception and displays an exuberant, almost unashamed virtuosity which only a young and extremely self-confident composer is capable of producing.

The works of this production with the Austrian ensemble Concerto Stella Matutina are closely connected with Luigi Cherubini’s (1760-1842) visit to Vienna in the summer of 1805, whose opera Faniska, which premiered there, became a triumphant success. In Vienna he not only composed the new interlude music for the successful piece Lodoiska, the young Hummel also paid him a special homage. The soloist Herbert Walser-Breuss plays this popular work on a historical keyed trumpet, as the interpreter of the world premiere had used it. Concerto Stella Matutina is fortunate in being able to combine the freshness and commitment of a relatively young orchestra with the many years’ experience of its members in some of Europe’s foremost baroque ensembles. The number of engagements for the baroque orchestra, both at home and abroad, has risen steadily since its foundation in 2005. CSM has its own concert series in Vorarlberg. In addition to performing well-known masterpieces, the musicians also focus particular attention on neglected works of the 17th and 18th centuries and continue to widen their horizon by the implementation of the most recent discoveries in performance practice.

The name of Noel Bauldewey is not often found among the extraordinary phenomena of an exceptionally rich generation of composers around 1500; this recording may well be the first entirely devoted to his works. And yet Bauldeweyn’s music is characterized by a very individual sound as well as an assured handling of the formal requirements of cyclic settings of the Mass ordinary. The wide geographic distribution of surviving works in choir books belonging to the Papal and Bavarian chapels as well as in the splendid manuscripts originating from Petrus Alamire’s atelier testifies to the reputation he enjoyed among his contemporaries. Some of Bauldeweyn’s compositions, especially the Missa Da pacem, were thought to be by his most prominent contemporary, Josquin Desprez, even into the twentieth century. His motet Quam pulchra also appears on a sheet of music from which an angel is playing in Caravaggio’s painting Rest on the Flight into Egypt in 1586- at least a generation after Bauldeweyn’s music had ceased to be published.

Francesco Galligioni obtained a Diploma in cello at the C. Pollini Conservatoire in Padua under G. Chiampan, then he then studied with Franco Maggio Ormezowski at both the Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia in Rome and at the A. Toscanini Foundation in Parma in the courses for soloists and orchestra leaders. He has taken part in courses specializing in baroque cello held by W. Vestidello and G. Nasillo, and worked with famous soloists and conductors (Anner Bylsma, Giuliano Carmignola, Cecilia Bartoli, Max Emmanuel Cencic, Magdalena Kozena, Sergio Azzolini, Sara Mingardo, Victoria Mullova, Angelika Kirschlagher, Andrea Marcon, Federico Guglielmo, Sir J. E. Gardiner, Diego Fasolis, Pedro Halffter, Bob Van Asperen, Michael Radulescu, Gustav Leonhardt, Christopher Hogwood), both in concert performances and recordings. On his latest release he plays the Suites No. 4 and 5 by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Johann Sebastian Bach's flute sonatas undoubtedly require congenial partners, who play together in an unpretentious, equally important way - in the truest sense of the word, in concert. This is brilliantly fulfilled by Lars Ulrik Mortensen with his hardly surpassable vocal playing on the harpsichord and Linde Brunmayr-Tutz with virtuosity and full sound on the transverse flute. On the 10th anniversary of Gustav Leonhardt's death, the album also contains a unique sound document: it is the first recording of Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt - both play viola da gamba here! - and also of Eduard Melkus. Under the direction of Josef Mertin, doyen of early music in Vienna, they recorded the 6th Brandenburg Concerto on original instruments for the first time in 1950.

Antonio Vivaldi wrote often for the orphan girls of the Ospedale della Pietà. The fame of the music-making ladies in Venice once resounded far beyond the lagoon city. Michael Oman, Amandine Beyer and the Grazzi brothers dedicate themselves to this very virtuoso repertoire with the Austrian Baroque Company. “Explosive music-making, glorious recorder-playing, Baroque swing” – this is how one could describe the basic aims and achievements of those top players from the original-instrument scene who came together to create the Austrian Baroque Company, a group which is celebrated internationally, receiving the highest praise and many awards since its formation in 2001.